"It's the bell tolling for the current authorities," said Ukraine's pro-Russian opposition leader, Viktor Yanukovych, in reaction to President Viktor Yushchenko's decision last night to dismiss parliament and call early elections. It's hard to disagree – it looks like the final nail in the coffin of the "orange alliance" between Yushchenko and the prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko.

Four years after the orange revolution appeared to set Ukraine on a pro-western, democratic path, its leaders have taken it into another cul-de-sac. The blame game over the last month has seen Yushchenko's office claim that Tymoshenko's silence over the Russia-Georgia war was evidence of a treasonous attempt to secure Moscow's backing for the presidential elections; Tymoshenko, for her part, sided with Yanukovych's Party of Regions in a vote to reduce the president's powers, which led to Yushchenko's party walking out on the coalition. Neither side is blameless in this long saga, where both have time and again appeared to put personal ambition and rivalry ahead of national interests.

Yushchenko's strategy is hard to unravel. On the back of his failure to deliver on the promises of the orange revolution, his approval ratings are in single figures and his party is polling at around 5%. His party is unlikely to gain in the elections and, after three elections in the last two years, people do not want to vote again. Polls show that around 70% are against early elections and many I have spoken to are not intending to vote.

If Yushchenko is trying to undermine Tymoshenko in the run-up to the presidential elections, she has already insulated herself against much criticism in two ways. First, she did not form a coalition with the Party of Regions, thus warding off claims that she is a pro-Moscow candidate and a traitor to her core voters in the west of Ukraine. Second, she made it clear in public that she was prepared to form a coalition and agreed to ultimatums from Yushchenko's bloc, Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defence. These moves should protect her from losing significant support in western Ukraine.

The spat between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko put paid to hopes of a more promising offer from the EU in September when the coalition split on the eve of the joint summit. The dismissal of parliament takes Ukraine's chances of receiving a membership action plan from Nato in December (when the elections are scheduled) from bad to nil. Internal strife is constantly cited in European capitals as the main reason for Ukraine's poor international standing.

Elections are expensive, and can be destructive. The next two months will see reams of kompromat, lowering public opinion of politicians even further, along with attempts to exploit divisions in Ukraine over Russia and Nato for political gain. The constant attacks reinforce the Russian narrative of division, instability and lack of progress that has dominated post-orange revolution Ukraine.

As the Polish expert on eastern politics Wieslaw Romanowski put it on Polish Radio: "It is not Yanukovych, nor Yushchenko, nor Tymoshenko who is the ally of Russia in Ukraine. The ally of Russia in Ukraine is crisis."